The focus in an open floorplan feels fragile, sitting in one I have a constant low level anxiety. I hate feeling constantly watched, as someone can see everything I do. Any time I sneeze I'm bothering a couple of dozen people. My monitors are open for display. If I eat at my desk everyone needs to suffer through that. My only sense of any sort of privacy are my headphones, which people are constantly talking over, or I'm taking off because someone is talking to me. There's no office door to close and never any promise of any sort of flow.
I'm sure it varies based on place of employment and personal preference. I understand many people have some level of social anxiety that may be exacerbated by the open floor plan. I just personally enjoy it and hope to not see its demise. Glad we get to pick our employer!
Unfortunately, that doesn't help, since 100% of software employers with offices use open floor plan offices, or some variant of the same.
I always ask people in the industry what company has private offices for programmers. The only answers I've ever heard are "Fog Creek" and "maybe Microsoft?", but my friends at Microsoft say that's not so common any more.
Citation badly needed. We use cubicles rather than open floor plans in most of our office locations. Every commercial real estate discussion I've had has treated open floor plan, cubes, and offices as three distinct points on a spectrum.
It's ironic to try and fit as many software developers in a floorspace as you can, when their productivity more than linearly drops like that. You could do with a few, actually focusing people.
It's not so much a social anxiety, as an awareness of others. You can't just be yourself without being rude. Even just basic body functions, like farting, is something you need to consider and manage before doing it. I'm not saying I want to constantly fart, but there's no privacy.
I didn't suggest it was the only reason people may prefer offices- just one potential reason. I'm making no claim about OP or any other specific person on this thread.
